So the phrase "All Lives Matters" has always rubbed me the wrong way, because it implies an alliance between all Americans, regardless of creed ethnicity or race, with bigots being outside of the norm. That is not true. The election of Donald Trump proves that white people as a demographic will just as likely ally with bigots as with minorities. I want to stress this is not meant to be an individual judgment on all white people, but as an understanding that in our current model of race relations, a minority group cannot fundamentally trust the white majority as a demographic to protect their rights. In this model of race relations, a minority can only really trust others of a similar back ground and shared experience to protect their rights because it is in their best interests to do so too. Any cooperation with white people can only be a temporary coalition based on mutually beneficial goals, rather than an alliance based on shared values.
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While I question the usage of "All Lives Matter" (in that -as truthful and rational as it sounds sans context, it is more often than not a sort of 'bumper sticker' that often sits right next to a Confederate flag or other racist sentiment) I also cannot get behind the "Black Lives Matter" movement. This is not because of typical feelings about race or politics but rather due to the simple fact that I am one of those
rationalists. We live at a time when the police are FAR less "racist" or abusive than they have ever been! And while it is a positive that some actual cases of police brutality and racism have been exposed in recent years (the Carolina cop who shot down a black criminal then tried to plant his taser on the body. for example.) it is very alarming that the overwhelming majority of cases cited as cases of police brutality and/or racism are not so (i.e. the Ferguson shooting of a young thug Hell-bent on assaulting and robbing everyone it seems) and even among those cases of actual police misconduct/abuse it is almost always against a criminal trying to run from police.
I am not at all suggesting any criminal who runs should be shot down or any such nonsense and, while I am a white man I was raised in a predominately black family (father, brother, sister, cousins, grandparents etc....all black). I have also been a Liberal for the most part most of my life. But here is what I am getting at:
Let's take that case where a black man driving a big car is pulled over by a young white police officer and decides he is just going to try his luck fleeing in his car rather than wait for the cop to arrest him on outstanding warrants or whatever. Of course the cop shot him and IIRC is now in Prison for it (as he should be). What if he had let the criminal just run, perhaps fearing being convicted by the media as being a 'racist cop-murderer'? And what if that black driver who is fleeing police decides he really has to get out of there FAST (fearing choppers and massive numbers of police cars joining the fray) so he hits 50-75 MPH, ignoring red lights etc. He ends up running over two small children trying to cross a street, undoubtedly killing them both. Now he REALLY needs to get the **** out of there! He goes even faster, taking corners no one should be taking at that speed and runs over an elderly woman in a church parking lot before cr5ashing into an SUV killing a mother trying to seat belt her kids into the vehicle.
Now we have a criminal who has killed two small children and two adults and injured who knows how many and the cries become "Why did that cop just let that criminal drive off like that?!".
It is certainly no simple matter and has no simple answers but let's not be lazy in how we characterize the whole thing.
